By Anahad O’Connor | The New York Times

About 3,400 workers at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn have lost their health care coverage, because the hospital has fallen behind in payments to its benefits fund, the union that represents many of the hospital’s workers said Thursday.

The hospital, which has recently been ensnared in a corruption scandal involving state legislators, said late Thursday night that it had fallen behind on payments because of its financial struggles. But a spokesman, Ole W. Pedersen, denied that workers were left without coverage, saying that the hospital had simply switched them to a new plan.

Mr. Pedersen’s claim, however, was sharply disputed by the hospital workers, who said they had not received insurance cards or documentation of a new policy.

“We have no evidence that we have coverage,” Scheena Tannis, 31, a registered nurse at Brookdale, said Thursday night.

In a statement, John C. Liu, the city’s comptroller, lashed out at Brookdale’s management.

“The current management seems incapable of handling the situation and perhaps should step down,” he said. “The State Department of Health should be called upon to take over the hospital.”

Throughout the day Thursday, 400 to 500 of the hospital’s workers — nurses, maintenance staff, clerical workers and others — gathered in the lobby of Brookdale to protest the loss of their coverage. The union specified in a statement Thursday that it was not an organized strike.

Mr. Pedersen, the Brookdale spokesman, said that the hospital made a $1.4 million payment to the workers’ health benefit fund last week — far short of the $4 million a month that the union representing the workers, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, said had been agreed upon under a collective bargaining agreement. The hospital has fallen about six months behind in payments and is $23 million in arrears.

In March, federal prosecutors unveiled a criminal case in which they said that David F. Rosen, chief executive of MediSys Health Network, the parent company of Brookdale, had bribed numerous politicians — including State Senator Carl Kruger and Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. — in exchange for grants and other political favors. All have pleaded not guilty.

Correction: June 1, 2011

An article in some editions on Friday about a protest by workers at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, in Brooklyn, over their health care coverage, paraphrased incorrectly comments by a hospital spokesman on a new health plan. The spokesman, Ole W. Pedersen, said that the plan would essentially provide the same coverage, not that it would stop covering employees’ spouses and children.